Squirrel in a Strange Land
by Red Squirrel Writer
Summary: A man finds himself stranded in the Redwall universe with no memory of his former life, only the knowledge that he didn't use to be the squirrel he is! With only the spirit of an odd mouse to guide him, can he survive?
1. The Dark Is Where It Starts

Where am I? It's so dark...

That was the first thing I heard myself think as I awoke to nothing all around me. Nothing was everywhere, stretching as far as the eye could see. My hand moved through a terrible inky blackness that was easy to move through, but impossible to see in. The most horrifying aspect of it was that I wasn't just in a darkened room. I was literally _nowhere_. My feet were touching the ground, that much was certain. I had always been terrified of the dark, because generally with the dark came confined spaces, and I was scared of that just as much as the dark. Those phobias stemmed mostly from a traumatizing incident a long time ago when I was a little boy, when I had been shut into a locker at grade school by some gang of bullies. I was in there all night, cramped and afraid. I felt the same now.

I felt the first pangs of horror tug at my heart, and my chest tightened. With a screeching yell, I hurtled forwards and tried running, but to no avail. I wasn't going anywhere, because there was nowhere to go to! Where was I?! I wracked my brain for answers, but kept coming to the same conclusion. I was nowhere. That couldn't be, but it was! I stopped at once, hyperventilating in a desperate attempt to keep calm. I had to remember how I got here! But how? What had happened?

Interstate 42. Yes, that was it. That was where I had been! Arizona. The desert near the mountains. I remembered a vague cough as the engine had run out of gas. Sleeping under the stars… something… something had struck me. But what? A bandit? Had I been kidnapped, locked in some cellar by a psychotic murderer? The very thought made my stomach grow heavy with dread, but at least it was a more realistic solution than simply being nowhere.

Nobody could be nowhere. It was impossible. Maybe I was having a nightmare, still sleeping in the back of my car? How did I wake up? Yes. It was just a nightmare. Hit yourself, I thought. I struck myself hard across the face, and yelped into the black. Nothing. Again! In the stomach this time!

I found myself out of breath and heaving on the… floor? Well, it certainly wasn't a dream. No, it was, said the last bit of my rational mind, clinging to explainable phenomena. This is just some sort of horrific memory resurfacing. Just sit and stay calm, and you'll wake up in your car, in the peace of the desert… a policeman will come and find you in the morning… stay calm…

Calm…

Calm?

Calm?!

I marveled at myself. How was I supposed to be calm at a time like this? I finally felt myself snap. I had to run. I had to do something to save myself instead of sit here and reason it out. Just run. Run away, hurry! There must be an end to all this!

I ran. Was something behind me? Air rushed by my face, giving the dreadful feeling I was being chased by some dread force. More childhood night terrors. I never dreamed of actual monsters, I remember. I couldn't put a face on something truly terrifying and still think of it as scary. Buggy eyes, tentacles, proboscis… that was typical monster glib from little children. You could fight off something like that. No… the real monsters were the shadows in the corner of the room, the dark _thing_ waiting beyond your door, the flitting shadow outside the window, the insane, imagined howl from downstairs… monstrous, indescribable, and incomprehensible in its base desire to utterly annihilate you and consume you in your entirety. A force of nature, a feeling of dark, pure, unadulterated evil that simply was there, that simply wanted nothing but sheer pain for you and you alone.

Real monsters didn't have faces, because they didn't need one. Suddenly, as if God Himself found my plight amusing and wanted to add insult to injury, I heard a groan immediately to my right. There was something there!

I screamed at that, loud and long. I shrieked in self-defense, waving my arms around in a frantic attempt to reassure myself I still had weapons to combat the nothing that wanted to kill me, even if they were just my limbs.

Then I ran into something, very hard and unyielding, cutting my gibberish off immediately. With a loud "Oof!" I felt my head crack against a wooden surface, and my back end up on the cold floor, if you could call it that. The terror was gone in place of surprise at smashing into a wooden door in the middle of nowhere. My eyes bulged, and suddenly I wasn't afraid anymore. I didn't know why, and didn't care. More than likely the stress of all this had driven me temporarily insane. I lay there for a moment.

"Ow," I said quietly, my voice echoing into the black. I slowly pulled myself up and felt forwards. The door was still there, and didn't go away as I slid my hands along it. How big was it? Was it an exit? Yes! My rational side flared up once more. Find the handle!

I walked up and down that door for a full minute, feeling nothing but more door. Then, a crack was discovered. Huzzah! But wait… it was only a millimeter wide, and more wood beyond that. Two doors. Not doors…

Gate? What was a gate doing here? Perhaps someone was behind it who could help me! My mind gave up on reality again and settled for this insane solution. I started banging on it as hard as I could.

"Help me!" I yelled as loud as I could. "Please, help! I'm lost! Let me in, I have to get out of here! Please, there's something out here with me! Please, just let me in, I'm begging you! I need to get_ out! In! I don't care, help me!" _I started sobbing as no answer came, and my yelling devolved into one continuous, wailing, desperate scream that was never answered. My voice went hoarse after a few minutes of screaming that went up and down in pitch, and I simply sat there, leaning on the gate, on my knees, waiting for whatever death that was out in this terrible Nothingness to come and claim me. I was still banging softly on the gate with my hand. I was too absorbed in this insanity to notice I couldn't see it.

"Well you're not getting in that way," said a voice to my right. I whirled in a panic and beheld the oddest sight I ever saw, and ever will see, in my life.

There was a mouse. In a medieval tunic (I remembered the look of it, being something of an aficionado on medieval history) and a red scarf, blue eyes twinkling, in some sort of spotlight, the light playing off his amber fur, sitting calmly on a tree stump like he saw people like me everyday. He seemed he would be about a head shorter than I was if he was standing up. His voice said he was a he.

Well, I thought, I've finally gone insane.

"And… who are you?" I said, my voice shaky. Despite the light illuminating the mouse, I still could see nothing of myself.

"That's probably a good thing," said the mouse. "You're pretty messed up at the moment." I could only imagine.

"What?" I said. No direct answer came. The mouse went on, with me staring with eyes larger than dinner plates, and there is no exaggeration there.

"You, my friend, have ended up in the oddest of places, depending on your viewpoint. That," and here he pointed at the gates before us, suddenly visible, and I marveled at their titanic size, "is the entrance to Dark Forest, as you may well know."

"That doesn't sound like a fun place," I said with the levelness of a mental patient.

"Depends on who and what you are," replied the mouse with a shrug. A sudden smile lit up his furry face. "Oh, by the way, my name's Garrety Lasham. But you can call me Garret. Or Gary. Or even Lashy," he said with a distinctly Scottish accent on the last name. "Martin let me guard the gates today," he said, his smile growing three times larger to where it was positively glowing. He was obviously very proud about getting to sit in the dark on a tree stump in the middle of nowhere.

"Um… okay… Gary?" I said with a twisted smile of my own. Maybe now a flying saucer would come and mercifully vaporize me to end this madness. I was talking to a mouse in a red scarf! How hilarious was that? I tried to laugh, but it sounded like another scream. The mouse lifted an eyebrow.

"Are you all right? Well, I expect you wouldn't be. Most beasts aren't when they come through here."

"B…Beasts?"

"Well of course! That's what we are! You, me, the ones inside Dark Forest." He peered at me curiously.

"I mean… that is what you are, right?" Could he see me, even if I couldn't' see myself? Surely he must be able to! Enough weird things were happening as they were. I stood up slowly, leaning on the Gate for support.

"Right, um… why am I here?"

"Well, you're dead, of course, unless there's been some sort of mix-up."

I fainted.

---- --- --- --- --- - ---

Ten minutes later, I was still in the middle of nothing, with that mouse looking down at me, very concerned. How could I see him without any light?

"Hey," he said quietly. "You all right?"

"I'm not dead, Gary," was the first thing I said, and I sounded so serious when I said his name I figured I must have become a complete lunatic.

"Well," said the mouse, apparently unwilling to argue the point further, "if you aren't, something weird's going on. Because nobeast comes here if they aren't dead."

"…Obviously," I said cautiously, just happy enough with the fact that the mouse had confirmed I wasn't dead.

"So, um… if Dark Forest is over there," I ventured, pointing at the gate, "then what's out there?" I pointed at the terrible void from which I had come. Gary looked at it and shivered. "Nobeast is allowed out there what's coming in through here. That way is…" A paleness seemed to come over him. "Well, let's just say it's the flip side of the coin. But between it and us is… well, that," he said at the blackness. "Out there are the Guardians."

"…The what?"

"Guardians. They keep the two places separate and do a good job of it, thank the Fates. I just wish they didn't have to be so creepy about it."

"What… what do they look like? I heard something coming here…"

"Well, you need to concentrate real hard… just stand there, relaxed." I did so, not bothering to reflect on that I was following directions from a mouse. "Now let your eyes go limp, like you're trying to fall down." I did that, too. Gary went silent, and my mind went into a relaxed trance.

And I could see them. Just for an instant, but it was enough to send me reeling with shock. Gary shook his head with sympathy. "Told you. They're weird. They've always been there, apparently." His voice was lost too me. I was too busy working on what I had seen… and heard. Oh, the sounds! Moans, and knells, mingled with ghastly whispers. Undulating shapes, always moving, too freakish to understand! How could I sum it up in words? Terrible groans, like a thing in agony, twisting forms too weird for human eyes to see! It was horrible, simply too alien for me to want to look upon again. Gary watched me for a moment.

"Uh… yeah. Well, to remove you of the creeping horrors, I guess I'll let you in now." Gary walked over to the gate, but my voice stopped him.

"Wait."

"Hmm?" Gary turned back and fixed his cerulean eyes on me.

"I'm not going in there," I said, pointing at the gate with an invisible finger. Gary scoffed at my defiance.

"Well of course you are! Can't just let you sit out here!"

"I thought you said I wasn't dead!"

"And I suppose that's simply just good enough a reason to pass up some good old fashioned woodlander hospitality? Come on!"

"No! Keep your freakish woodlander… whatever! I'm not getting in that thing!" I said with an anger that shocked even me.

Gary looked up at nothing suddenly, concentrating on some unknown thought.

"Oh boy," he said with trepidation. I got up and shook my head despairingly.

"No," I said, the anger still festering within me. "No 'oh boys.' That means something bad. Enough bad's happened already! Why 'Oh boy?'"

Gary looked back at me like he had first noticed I was there. "Oh… well, there has been a mix-up! You're not quite dead yet. We thought you were, you even had old Brocktree fooled, and not much gets by him! Your infection seems to have um… gone away?"

I felt a sudden anger well up in my chest, but the names Martin and Brocktree stirred something in the back of my mind.

"What the hell is going on here?!" Gary seemed miffed.

"Well calm down now, no need to be testy. You're just going back, now be happy about it! Not many get to have this sort of experience, brushes with death and all that."

Oh good, I thought. That means I'll wake up in my car, and everything will be just fine and dandy, and this will just be some weird dream to tell my friends back in San Francisco when I'm done with this mess of a vacation.

"Oh, one last thing…" said Gary, but I wasn't really listening. "If you need me, just fall asleep and call my name. Make sure you don't dream though, it's a mess trying to find beasts in that stuff, even for Martin."

Yep, I thought. Everything was going to be normal now. I was finally going to wake up and go ho-

Wait a minute, I thought as I lifted my head.

How did the back of my car get grass on it? Fluffy, green, _verdant_ grass…

I lifted myself up with my, um... my, uh... my... paws...? And found myself in a sunlit field of low, gently rolling hills. The sun shone merrily. A bird sang from a nearby tree grove. Fluffy clouds trundled by overhead. This wasn't my car. It wasn't home.

I was nowhere again.

Oh, _sh-_


	2. Out of the frying pan

It was the most beautiful place in the natural world I had ever seen, comparable even to the Rocky Mountains despite the fact they were mere flat hills; knolls was a better word for it, and I was terrified of it. More than terrified; I thought the very ground beneath me was preparing to swallow me whole and make me suffocate till death. It certainly would fit with the complete lunacy of my predicament. Somehow, I had gone from a pitch black void in space talking to a mouse about the hellish landscape I was in, and the next I was in the very definition of natural beauty. It was terrifying, mind-numbing, and utterly confusing all at once. I scratched my furry behind.

Why on Earth was I so itchy? Only then did I notice that my behind had some sort of fuzz on it. That and I wasn't wearing my normal clothing, my muscles seemed to have expanded quite a bit, and scratching myself was now far more satisfying due to the fact that I now had claws on my paws. I would have tried saying that five times fast if I wasn't so petrified at the sudden change in my physical form.

I lifted my paw from my rump and stared at it in abject, wide-eyed horror. It was ashen black, but still had discernable fingers on the end of the "hand." The claws that sprouted from it created a vulgar feeling in my stomach for some reason, and an awful truth that I would not accept hit me in the face. I had turned into some sort of creature! Now this simply had to be a dream! I didn't care anymore what happened and whether or not it made any sense at all, or aligned with what I knew to be real. I truly did not. Nothing here made sense because I was asleep. I was. I had to believe that or I would surely go mad, if I hadn't already.

And yet, I could feel the wind on my face, running through the fur that apparently had gathered there. I ran my new appendage across the soft fuzz there, and I gasped in shock. What on Earth had happened? This was too strange even for a dream! I could feel my fingers running through the bristles! The warmth of the sun on my back! The smell of a flower in my nostrils! Was this some sort of childhood memory that had involved an animal of some kind?

Or, said something in the far, dark, most remote corners of my mind, is all of this actually happening?

I shook my head and got up off of my furry bottom and looked sharply down at my entire body. What I saw was wearing a tunic of some sort, with a worn, leather belt wrapped tightly around the waist. The whole body was covered in fine, stiff, crimson fur, the color of the apples my grandmother grew in her orchards. The cloth of the apparel was torn and tattered in many places. I looked at my footpaws, but didn't believe they were mine. I shook my leg, and the corresponding one below followed my movement. I wriggled my toes, and the toes of this monstrosity I was looking at followed suit.

I took a step backwards to try and remove myself of the beast's closeness. It stepped back with me, because it was me, and I was it. We were I being one of the same, unified creature. My train of thought ran along like this until it got going in such circles that it ran off the track and exploded into a gigantic fireball, with entrails and metal chunks flying. That did it. It was time to run again.

I dashed to the top of the nearest hill, breathing hard out of panic, trying not to think. I had to know where I was first. My mind wouldn't allow me to perceive of anything else. I scanned the horizon and saw what appeared to be a gigantic cluster of trees to the east. Nothing to the west and north, but on the south a huge, mountainous structure rose up from the ground. Another gust of wind blew to me a new discovery. Something large and fluffy and annoying slapped against my side, and I hit it as hard as I could without looking. Yelping with sudden pain, I looked at the offender, and my heart stopped again for a moment.

There. Was. A. Tail. In. My. Bottom.

I tugged at it furiously, tears running down in rivulets through the bright crimson fur with a new sort of desperation. It was finally beginning to sink in that this just might possibly, through some very slim chance of a weird natural phenomenon, be true. But I looked like an escaped lab experiment! No, worse! Whatever this thing was, it looked remarkably like a regular, woodland squirrel! And I was it! And it was me!

And it… And I… I had to get out. No matter what. I had to simply run until my lungs exploded and my heart gave out and I fell to the ground dead. I wanted the birds to pluck those enlarged eyes of mine right out of my face as I lay there dead. I didn't care. I didn't care! This was too real to _be _real, and I simply would not stand for it! I was going to get out of this place and away from whatever form I had taken if I had to find a cliff and jump off of it!

And then, a voice came to me. I flicked my pointed ear in its direction, and my heart skipped a beat as I discovered those ears. That whole bit with my heart stopping was beginning to get annoyingly painful. I ran my paws up and down those tufted ears again and again to make sure it was real. For some crazy reason the tail was twitching with my rising anxiety.

But the voices were regular ones. Human ones. I turned towards them and sobbed with my good fortune. Maybe they could help! Wait, I thought instantly. Help with what? This wasn't real, was it? Yes it was, that's why you're relieved, I said. But it isn't, said I in return. People don't turn into squirrels after nearly dying in big black nothings. I'm not here. I'm in Arizona. _I'm human, do you hear?_ I snapped at myself. Human! Human human human!

Despite all this, I raised my paws and waved to a group of figures cresting the next hill.

"Hullo!" I shouted, and instantly quieted myself. Was that my voice? It sounded like it, but was deeper, more confident. The kind of voice a girl in my home town would find alluring. I waited instead to see what news these other people would bring me.

What I saw with my larger, enhanced eyes almost made me die of fright. They were not human.

They were rats! Humongous rats! With bows and a quiver of arrows! From the tips of their naked tails to the ends of their pointed, snarling snouts, I could tell instinctively (human, not squirrel instincts mind you), that they were most definitely not there to be my friend. They all were dressed in some sort of leather armor and chain mail, save the one in front who happened to be the largest. He was decked out in expensive looking scale armor. All of them also wore domed helmets with slips of cloth hanging down the backside to protect them from the sun, I reasoned.

Oh well, said my rational side. If you can't beat them, join them. Let's play along, shall we?

The rat at the head of the pack lifted the rim of his domed helmet and snarled maliciously at me.

"Yew idjit brushtail!" he said with a voice that sounded like a gurgling frog with stones in its throat, with me not answering or moving. It wasn't real after all. "Yew ain't gonna be runnin', eh? Too blind to see our banners, then? Oh well, ya lardbrain! Makes our job easier! Cut 'im up, boys!"

Cut him up? Is that what he said? I suddenly found myself beginning to shake with an odd feeling that I had to run before something awful happened to me. I still remained, silent and stoic as a statue. Let them kill me, I thought. If it will help me wake up from this nightmare, I'll welcome it.

They drew their bows and strung their arrows. They loosed the barbed shafts.

To this day I do not know how, and I do not know why, but in that one single instant I realized that I absolutely could not be hit by those arrows. I ducked, feeling one of the arrowheads graze the skin of my shoulder, the others whistling by harmlessly.

I looked over at the injury and saw blood. Terrible, red, human-like blood, beading to the surface and beginning to flow. My pupils dialated.

It was real, I realized. The pain was real. The arrows. The rats. All of it was horrifically, disgustingly real.

I turned and bolted. My mind had snapped when I said to myself that it was actually happening. I don't know how far or how long I ran, but it must not have been for very much, for only what must have been a few seconds after the start of my headlong dash for freedom, I felt something pierce my side, and I went down as a sudden bolt of agony lanced into my head, paralyzing me and forcing me to stumble. I fell for an eternity in that one second, having just enough time to notice a large rock rushing upwards out of the ground towards my face.

I struck it, and the lights went out.

But not forever. Something terrible awaited me when I woke up.


	3. So It Begins

Blinding pain shattered my senses as I rose up to groggy consciousness. I found that I could not move, for my arms were being held up in the air. Somebeast (or two) was holding me up as I was being dragged along a floor. It was rough, and had many tiny ridges and bumps that flaked off into my fur. There were some larger cracks at regular intervals, and the hem of my tunic snatched and tore at the planks below. It was extremely uncomfortable.

Wood. That was a wooden floor. It was no longer the pleasant green grass I remembered. But why was I here now? Something about the grass? What about before the grass? The rats, I remembered, had chased me across the grass. Why did they do that? I pushed my way through a haze of agonizing pain, sifting through my thoughts. They ran from me. I attempted to catch up with them, but stumbled and fell into another fog. Only the here and now made any sense. Lifting my head, I was relieved to see the light in this place was sparse. It seemed to be some long, spartan hallway made entirely of wood. I could see some large, intimidating shadow a few feet ahead, moving at my pace. One of my eyes was half-closed despite my efforts to the contrary (which were fairly weak), and a dull throbbing emanated from it. As feeling began to return, I felt somebeast's claws digging into my arms. I looked farther upwards.

Two large silhouettes at my sides were pulling me along. A warbled, dull voice like I was listening through water reached my ears, which flicked weakly in a sign of life, my head falling back against my chest. My eyes closed again. It took too much effort to keep them open.

"Hnn. I do not see why we must heft this… dead weight. Why not leave him in his cell? Or throw him to the Rippers? They have not been fed in days. Foreign meat may satiate their appetite."

"Captain Vaslu has said he wishes to personally interview those we find in the countryside. The red place and the hares' mountain has caught the eye of the Emperor himself, they say." The second voice was no different from the first due to the constant headache pounding into my head, filling my ears with white noise.

"By the stars!" exclaimed the first. "But it took two months just to get here! And we were nearly killed at the foot mountain, you remember? These stinking Mossflower barbarians are beneath us in all ways. They have not even put down the clans on the coast. Those… Juska vermin. Respectable rats like us bowing to fairy tales of great warriors and… and ferrets! I feel this whole blasted land may waste the Lord Emperor's time."

"I agree. Although anybeast that attacks unprovoked like those cursed hares deserves to burn in the Empire's flames. I just wish it was not us to taste their bite."

"Be quiet, both of you!" said a third voice, possibly from the huge shadow before me. It cut through the darkness in my mind, making me wince at the sharp, commanding tone that bit into my sensitive ears. "You both whine like whelps fresh off their mother's breast. I want to hear no more from you until we are finished with this baggage here."

I could only feel slightly indignant at being called "baggage" before darkness overcame my race to stay ahead once more. But this blackness was not simple and blank. It was something more, something I had seen before… but what?

----- ---- ----- ------ --- --- -- -

_Oh, thank goodness! Bless you, you're still alive! _

W… what? Who are you?

_Me? I'm Garrety! Garrety Lasham! We met not five hours ago! Don't you remember?_

N…No. I don't… where did…are you a mouse?

_Well, at least you know that much. That was some hit to the head you took there! Falling on a rock like that might normally send you right back to Dark Forest Gates!_

Where's that?

…_Don't tell me you don't remember that even. Do you know what happened? Where you are? Me and Martin saw everything! It was terrible, them just waltzing up and shooting you without so much as a howdy do! Well, I'm here now, no fears! You… say, I never caught your name._

I… it's…

----- ----- - -------- ----------- ----

"It's what?"

"Huh? Who…"

"I said… what is your name?"

"My name?"

"Come now. Everybeast under the sun has a name. As do you. Now tell me." Something warm leaned in close to my muzzle. I was on my knees in a brighter, warmer room than the hallway before. I almost gasped at how unclear my vision was. Was I blind? My eyes were still closed, I believed, but a smell invaded my nostrils. Rats. And a couple of other beasts, perhaps a fox, and a weasel. But… how did I recognize such things? I had never smelt them before. But what set off a panic alarm in me was the beast doing the questioning. Something deep inside of me said that it was unfamiliar, and thus something to be afraid of. It was not the thick stench of rat, it said, so be on your guard. I pushed away the baser instincts and put myself in the present. Who was talking? The captain I heard of earlier? Why did he want my name? Did I have to give it to him? Would he hurt me if I did not? Possibilities of torture and death and burning at the stake ran through my mind. Something hard, cold, and inexorable wrapped slowly around my neck. The voice, once calm and collected, turned callous and dangerous. I racked my brain, but could find nothing. Even the field I had been shot in was a blur of green and red.

"Your name, please. Your foreign stench already clogs my nostrils." There was a long moment of waiting as I held my breath, searching desperately for an answer. The thing around my throat tightened, and I began to gag. I tried to lift my paws to pry away the intrusion, but they were bound behind my back.

"I don't…I don't remember," I said hoarsely.

"That's not an answer," said the other. "You have a name. You're just not giving it to me. What is it?"

"I don't know," I said again, a hint of desperation in my voice. Why couldn't I open my eyes? Why was this happening? Questions ran at the speed of light through my head. Why had they taken me? Where was I? Wouldn't he just believe I didn't know what he wanted me to tell him? Did I know?

And who in Martin's name _was I? _Worse, why did I just take the name of a beast named Martin in vain? Who was Martin? How did I know his name and not my own? The grip around my throat came dangerously close to cutting off all my breathing entirely.

"_Your name, scum. _Or it's the torture chamber for you."

"I don't know!" I said loudly, the pain and fear distracting me from concentrating. I shivered at how unclear I was being, and somehow knew that it placed me in some kind of danger. The other one didn't seem to like the way I was acting.

"You don't seem to understand that when I ask for something, I want it. And I want it very soon after I ask. Now, you aren't going to tell me you don't know your own name. That is foolishness. Now tell me your name!"

"I don't know."

"What is your name?"

"I don't know!"

"_What is your name?"_

"_I don't know!!!"_ I shouted at last, the effort ripping through my throat and causing irritation on the parched skin within. I realized I was devoid of water and nutrition. The other released me, and then struck me hard across the face. I crumpled, whimpering pitifully as the blow had connected with the part of my face already bruised from my fall in the field.

"For the last time, you foreign filth. What is your name?"

"I… My name is…" I had to think of something, that much I knew. I would lie. Yes. If I couldn't remember my old name, I would make a new one. But what? Some inner instinct told me horrible pain was only seconds away if I didn't give whoever it was that was bothering me something.

"Adrick," I said out of the blue.

"Hnh?"

"Adrick," I said again, with a measure of humility. "My name is Adrick."

Silence.

"Adrick, then." I sighed with relief. No pain. Yet. "Tell me what you know of Redwall Abbey."

Something clicked. That name triggered a memory. Sandstone walls, red in color, place of peace. I had read about it… years ago. But what to say now? He hadn't sounded very convinced when I said my name. I had to at least talk.

"It's um… I've… never been there… personally…" I could think of not much else. Pain throbbed in my head, and my side was aching. I winced as the pain came cascading back into my conscious thought again. "I know that… it's… a haven for peaceful creatures with good hearts. And it is very old."

"Not as old as the Empire."

"I… would not know…"

"Swine! Redwall's history, whatever it may be, is nothing compared to the might of our Imperium! Any fools who cater to the weak under pretenses of aimless compassion without even a favor to previous honor do not earn my respect, or the respect of the Emperor, with ease." I cringed, trying to huddle against a wall I felt behind me. Nobeast tried to cease my movements. They were causing enough pain as it was anyway, and they seemed to know that.

"I know that it has never fallen to an enemy." Yes, that might impress him. I don't know where I had read this, though. It was simply known.

"Pah," said the other voice. "Anybeast can fight if they wish. The cretins here are no real threat. If a simple wall stops them, I am not impressed overmuch." Well fine, I thought bitterly, angry indignation coursing through my veins along with the confusion and hurt, don't ask me about it again then.

"And the mountain of hares?" Oh. That part was quite foggy indeed.

"It… too… has never fallen to outside foes. Except once."

"What do you mean?"

I licked my dry lips. Why did I remember all this and nothing of anything else? "A cat. Wildcat. I don't know his name… ughn… it hurts…"

"Then faint like a coward and face torture. Or talk. I may spare you."

"A cat… took it over… blunderer… like all the rest… badger came and killed him…for… for revenge. The cat… his army was the largest ever seen. But he was beaten. Arrogance."

"Of course. That is what they all tell me." I sensed movement. "Take him back to his cell. Give him some water as a reward, and spare him the racks. Is that all?"

"Yes, captain," said a new voice, soft and demurring. An underling's voice.

"Very well," said the captain. "Shove off of this filthy foreign beach! We sail for the shelter of the glorious Imperium!"

I was dragged back by two other creatures, and tossed into a room. My head swam and a cold chill ran through me with the pain. Something clanked on the ground in front of me.

"Drink up," somebeast sneered, then laughed and walked away. The door slammed shut, and what faint light there was left me altogether. I crawled forward as best I could with bound paws. Water? Where? I searched fruitlessly for a few moments, and my whiskers brushed against cold metal. There was a cup. Gingerly, I lapped up what water I could, soothing the parched skin in my throat. Suddenly, the room lurched, and the water spilled. Crying out in despair, I rolled up against the far wall as much groaning and pitching took place. Was this some sort of ship? It made sense, as there was a captain, and the place was made of wood.

But why could I not see? Another roll of the floor, and I slid into the far wall. It took but a second or two; the room was not large. I brushed my face against the wood and felt something over my eyes. Cloth. I was blindfolded.

After a few minutes, the rolling subsided into something more calm. We were on the water, wherever that was. Hopefully I would be able to get some answers before this trip was done.

Confusion reigned as I lay there in pain, only taking comfort in that I felt bandages around my wound. Why was the word of the day. Why was this happening to me? What had I done, and why had I done it? Why was I here at all? Why did I not remember my first name? I knew I was not what I now was. A squirrel, said I to myself. My tail flicked in response. Terrific. So I was a squirrel at the mercy of giant rats.

I pressed my back against the wall, groaning as my arrow wound found pain in the pressure. Pushing upwards with my strong lower legs, I was able to stand, but immediately dizziness overtook me. I pitched forward blindly, falling to my knees. My chest collided with the edge of something, and the breath was blown from my lungs. A cot? A bed? A bench? Anything to lie on was good enough for me. I staggered upright and clumsily placed myself on the mattress. If it could be called that.

Through the sense of feel, I discerned my bedding was a simple matter. Rough cloth spread over a fairly soft bed of grass or hay. It confused me still more how I knew what grass and hay was without knowing my name. It was dry and poked at me incessantly, making me grunt every few moments as my injury was prodded.

Now that I was lying down, I could finally take notice of how tired I was. I would never sleep with my paws behind my back, though. I devised a strategy I somehow knew, an ability I had always had. I curled up my legs and simply pushed my paws down until they came around and up over my footpaws. It was a simply maneuver, but the bending required caused me much pain. It was worth it, though. At least now I knew my arms would not be still asleep when I woke up.

I decided not to call on Garrety for now. Whoever that creature was.


End file.
